markpkessinger
markpkessinger's JournalNo, the police do NOT actually protect us from criminals
<Note: I originally posted this as a comment to a very good Michael Winshiop/Bill Moyers & Co. Op-Ed appearing on Truth-Out.org, titled, "You Have the Right to Remain Angry." My comment turned out to be rather lengthy, and I thought it might make for a good OP here.>So we live a world of conundrum. We expect the police to protect and not harm us; in return, they expect our respect regardless of any transgressions.
What police receive in return for "protecting us" (which, by the way, they actually don't -- more on that in a second) is the salary and other benefits they get for doing their jobs. If police are unhappy with that arrangement, they can bargain for a better one. Or, if police and the city cannot arrive at terms that are acceptable to some officers, those officers have the "right" to do what any private sector employee must do in such a circumstance: either deal with it or find another job. Personally, I would favor paying police officers a significantly higher salary, paying for it by thinning the bloated ranks of the NYPD.
Now, as to this oft-repeated notion that police "protect" us. Most of what police officers do, besides routine patrols, consists of investigating and apprehending people for crimes that have already been committed. To the extent a criminal is taken off the streets when apprehended by police, sure, to an extent that may provide some protection from that person's ability to commit crime again, at least for a period of time. Also, their mere presence on routine patrol likely deters a certain number of mostly petty crimes of opportunity. But to hear police officers tell it, every single day, every single officer intervenes in a a crime in progress by a would-be Green River Killer. That sort of thing may happen from time to time, but to suggest the frequency of such occurrences is anything other than pretty rare is the stuff of fiction.
What's more, in the 2005 Supreme Court case, Town of Castle Rock v. Gonzales, the Court ruled that police do NOT have any duty or obligation to protect a specific individual from a specific crime, even in cases where there was a protective order in place, and the person purportedly protected by that order has notified police of an imminent threat or violation of that order in progress. Police cannot continue to have it both ways: either they have a duty to protect citizens from crimes in progress (when possible), or they don't. And if, as the Supreme Court held, they have no such duty or obligation, then it is time to drop the notion that they "protect us" in any way other than indirectly. Certainly, they don't actively protect us.
Finally, with regard to the 'respect' police officers demand, of course they should be entitled to respect -- as should every human being. That includes the public whom the police (purportedly) serve. But police around the country have conflated respect with unquestioning deference and almost no independent accountability for wrongdoing by police. And so long as this country even pretends to be a representative democracy, no person and no position is ever entitled to such exalted status.
About that "context" (re: Charlie Hebdo)
In response to a couple of OP's of mine which have apparently been insufficiently uncritical of the "Je suis Charlie" campaign, I have been accused of being ignorant of, failing to "educate" myself about, or too lazy to investigate links to articles the provide the "context" for the Charlie Hebdo cartoons (along with being accused of purporting to be an expert on France and of being part of the same kind of thinking that underlay the absurd "freedom fries" nonsense of some years back). For the record, yes, I have read those links, and have considered what is in them. But the question of whether that context stands as justification for the nature of the cartoons is, in the end, a subjective determination, about which reasonable people can and will disagree. I have no problem with anyone who wishes to express disagreement. But I call foul on the repeated rude, snide insults and other attempts to bully those of us on DU who hold a different view of the response to the Charlie Hebdo attacks into acquiescence to a single read of the events in France.
So I finally got around to looking at the offending Charlie Hebdo cartoons . . .
So, I finally got around to looking at the Charlie Hebdo cartoons. I am pretty absolute in my support for freedom of speech and freedom of the press, including, and especially, when what is said or published is offensive. So yes, I support Charlie Hebdo's right, as a matter of law, to publish what it published, and it goes without saying that no one deserves to be murdered for it.
But having said that, I gotta say that much of the Charlie Hebdo material is really vile, racist, bigoted stuff. Calling it 'satire' is a bit of a stretch, for me at least. When I think of satire, I think of something that may indeed offend some who see it, but at least makes a point while doing so. Many of the Charlie Hebdo cartoons have no larger point to make. They seem to have been calculated to offend for the sake of offending -- truly lowest common denominator stuff. So the spectacle of a million people marching through the streets of Paris under the banner of "Je suis Charlie" strikes me as being akin to a million people marching on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. in support of a company that produces minstrel shows.
It just seems a shame to me that a country like France, which has long taken such pride in the high level of intellect and sophistication of its public discourse, could not find a more constructive way to respond to the attacks. And it seems sad that in a conversation has been all about the belligerent assertion of rights, there seems to be no room for any discussion of the responsible exercise of those rights.
The Glaring Hypocrisy of France Posing as a Beacon for Free Speech
I was as horrified by the attacks in Paris as anyone else. And I have long been a firm believer in our own Constitution's protection for freedom of speech. But please count me not among those who were deeply stirred or moved by images of the Unity March in Paris. Oh, some of those images gave me goosebumps alright, but not the good kind. It was rather the frisson one experiences when he suddenly realizes he is witnessing something very dark and sinister passing under the guise of something noble and pure.
Before I go any further, let me state unequivocally that nothing in this post is intended, nor should be construed, as justifying or excusing in any way the terrorist attacks in Paris. I'll state it another way: I am not in any way suggesting that the killings in Paris by terrorists were in any way justified or that those killings are in any way excusable. But for the people of France to refuse any nuance in their understanding of the attacks, to permit themselves to indulge the temptation of simplistic, self-righteous, Manichean narratives that reduce the events in Paris as being explainable in terms of a barbarians-at-the-gate myth, while disingenuously (and somewhat dishonestly) holding their own country out as some kind of bulwark of free speech against assaults by those who hate France because of its freedoms (sound familiar?), is for the people of France to fall into the same delusion that overtook many Americans in the wake of 9-11, when a criminal President, relied on an identical narrative in order to lead this country down the rabbit hole that was (and is once again) the war in Iraq.
France, it should be remembered, actually regulates speech in very significant ways -- ways that would be unthinkable to most Americans. Among other restrictions, there are laws in France against:
- insulting the national anthem or the French flag, under penalty of a 9,000 euro fine or six months in prison;
- the wearing of burkas or niqab's in public, and even the wearing of hijabs in government buildings (including schools), which is certainly an infringement on the freedom of expression by Muslims;
- offending the dignity of the public, which includes prohibitions against insulting public officials or employees; and
- presenting illicit drugs in any kind of positive light (which has been used to prosecute and levy repeated, heavy fins against organizations that have published articles critical of France's drug laws, including, ironically enough, Charlie Hebdo itself). Just think about how laws such as those would have impacted the legalization debate if they had been in effect in this country.
Je suis Charlie, mon derrière!
Coming, as all of this does, at a time when there has been a significant rise in xenophobic and right-wing nationalist movements, as will as in anti-Muslim acts of violence, in France and across Europe, this kind of nationalist self-righteousness should be a cause of grave concern for anyone who doesn't want to see the West go off the rails once again in the way that the U.S. went off the rails after 9-11. And I applaud President Obama for not getting sucked into it.
I'll close this with this brief clip of Noam Chomsky from 2013, in which he calls out the "fakery and fraud" of France's self-congratulatory promotion of itself as a beacon of free speech:
A comment I just posted to a NY Times article about de Blasio's "missteps"
The three reporters who wrote this article (In Police Rift, Mayor de Blasio’s Missteps Included Thinking It Would Pass) seem to be carrying water for the NYPD. Here is a comment I just posted to it:
“You can’t just say, ‘Look, I’m saying I support you, so change the way you feel,’ “ one police officer said. Invoking a failed marriage, he added: “Even if you go through the motions of trying to reconcile, the feeling isn’t there.”
Oh, good grief! To this statement, I can only quote Bill Maher, from his show on Friday, Jan. 9:
"Seriously, if our deal with the police is that we have to constantly reassure them how much we love them, or else they throw a tantrum, we aren't supporting them, we're dating them!"
The notion that there must be some special "feeling" between the NYPD and the mayor, absent which there can be no healing or reconciliation, demonstrates just how absurd and delusional the mindset of many in the NYPD has become. Police officers are employees of the city, and the Mayor is the elected chief executive of their employer. Cops need not love their chief executive, nor agree with him. But they should still be expected to do their jobs and to do them professionally, and to respect the chief executive's office, even if they may not be fond of the current holder of that office -- in the same way that employees of any corporation need not love their CEO personally, but are still expected to do their jobs and to be respectful towards the CEO, or else find alternative employment!
As for the Mayor's "missteps" and "gaffes," while we may quibble about one or more of these issues, they are not "missteps" or "gaffes" merely because the NYPD doesn't like them.
Nearly 2,000 people were killed in a terrorist attack in Nigeria this week . . .
. . . and Western media have barely noticed, having chosen instead to focus almost exclusively on the Paris attacks, in which a handful of Westerners were killed. I don't, for one moment, wish to detract from the horror of the attacks in Paris, but we shouldn't view a terrorist attack as being uniquely horrific merely because its targets were primarily Western Europeans or Americans. Our news media, in their very selective coverage of incidents such as this, feed a sense of unique victimization whenever it is Americans or Western Europeans who are the victims of terrorist attacks. They certainly did this in the wake of 9-11, and it contributed, I believe, to the apparently widespread belief among Americans that the U.S. is somehow uniquely exempt from moral constraint in its response to terrorist attacks.
http://www.msnbc.com/melissa-harris-perry/watch/nigerians-hit-by-brutal-terror-attack-382766659522
NYT Op-Ed: "Why We’re So Mad at de Blasio"
NOTE: I am sharing this Op-Ed, by a retired NYPD officer, less for the content of the Op-Ed itself -- which, frankly, brings nothing new or noteworthy to the discussion -- than for the reader comments, the thoughtfulness and eloquence of which far surpass the Op-Ed. The NYPD, with it's continued petulant, self-pitying and childish behavior is losing the public, as indeed it deserves to.< . . . . >
The murders of Officer Liu and his partner, Officer Rafael Ramos, have hit me and my fellow officers especially hard, in ways that may be difficult for civilians, and certain politicians, to fully comprehend. During my 20 years on the job (I retired in 2003), I attended far too many funerals for cops killed in the line of duty. They were all sad and wrenching affairs. But this is different. Getting killed while, say, investigating an armed robbery — as almost happened on Monday to two New York City police officers in the Bronx — is something all cops know can occur, and we accept it. But the killing of Officers Liu and Ramos was a coldblooded assassination.
These brave men were shot without warning, sitting in their patrol car while looking for crime, something every cop on the street does every day. They were like two shepherds guarding their flock, and they were brutally murdered for it.
This act has unleashed a torrent of anger and grief among the members of the Police Department, who take these vile murders personally, and a heartening outpouring of sympathy from ordinary New Yorkers, who instinctively grasp what it has meant at a moment when the police feel demonized, demoralized and, at times, literally under assault. But not everyone is so understanding. The gestures of protest by many officers toward Mayor Bill de Blasio — including turning their backs to him when he appeared at both officers’ funerals — have been characterized in some quarters as squandering the credibility of the department and reeking of self-pity.
When I hear this sort of thing, my blood pressure goes through the roof. Mr. de Blasio is more than any other public figure in this city responsible for feelings of demoralization among the police. It did not help to tell the world about instructing his son, Dante, who is biracial, to be wary of the police, or to publicly signal support of anti-police protesters (for instance, by standing alongside the Rev. Al Sharpton, a staunch backer of the protests). If there is any self-pity involved, which I doubt, it is only because we lack respect from our elected officials and parts of the media. It has taken two dead cops for some people to take a step back and realize what a difficult job cops have.
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